Sandra Fluke, law student & emerging feminist leader

With all the recent downers for women's reproductive rights, the appearance of Sandra Fluke, Georgetown University law student in Washington, D.C. offers us old lady feminists hope for a better future.**

Listen to her speak to this issue which goes far beyond reproductive ones.  The blog, this black sista's page, adds more to the conversation.   We're all in agreement:  Once women and men give decision-making power to politicians on related issues--end of life choices, for example--we might as well be receiving "care" from car mechanics.

 

Did your newspaper do a "not-in-our precious pages" on this Doonesbury cartoon?  For all the people who think PDX is a progressive, modern city, here is The Oregonian on March 9, in its own words:

Gary Trudeau, in our judgment, went over the line of good taste and humor in penning a series on abortion using graphic language and images inappropriate for a comics page. 

While we rarely pull strips for taste reasons, this was a clear call for the editors of the paper and for some other papers around the country, including the Los Angeles Times and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. 

Thanks to Feminema for posting this today under the title "Please take a seat in the shaming room."   

Received my order of ten more 17% buttons from the Feminist Marjority.  If there's a Democratic woman running for the House or Senate where you live, I'd be glad to send you a button.  I only ask that you wear it ALL the time.  Amaze family, co-workers, and friends who ask what that number represents:  the percentage of women in Congress.  Still amazes me!

**Following her Congressional testimony, Sandra Fluke was added to the speakers for  "Women, Money, Power Summit and National Young Feminist Leadership Conference" in Washington, D.C., March 29 to April 2. Timely that the Feminist Majority could add her voice to those of other young leaders-- the women us old ladies count on for an improved 21st century for our daughters and granddaughters.

Last month in my Cultural Geography class at PSU, a grad student used this womanpower image, new to me, in a presentation referring  to International Women's Day, March 8.  [Thanks, Blanca]  Dating back to the early 1900s, it was observed until recently mostly in Europe.  In the U.S., the official start of Women's History month was March 1987. 

When I started working on women's history about thirty years ago, the field did not exist. People didn't think that women had a history worth knowing.  -Gerda Lerner, Women and History: The Creation of Patriarchy, 1986